Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Pineapples are starting to appear on the streets now!  Another season has begun–one of my favorites.  IMHO, there’s not anything better tasting than fresh pineapple!

The appearance on the streets of some fruits marks the beginning of a season of the year, but not so with bananas.  They are available all year round, in multiple sizes, shapes, and colors.  Here a husband and wife team make an early morning delivery to the small markets they supply with Cambodia’s staple fruit.

It probably happens in every culture and I’ve certainly observed “cruising” in US culture as I was growing up and as I worked with youth in Kentucky.  Cruising–riding around aimlessly with your friends–is part of youth culture here in Phnom Penh, too.  Here a group of high school girls take to the streets on a Sunday afternoon.

 

 

 

“Hold on up there!  I’m gonna do a wheelie!”

When the weather doesn’t change throughout the year and there are no sports seasons and the trees don’t shed leaves, one of the few indicators of time are the seasonal fruits.  And now it’s mango time!  Hooray!   IMHO, this is one of the best parts of Cambodia.  I was never really exposed to mangoes before I came to Asia but they have become a much-appreciated new part of my diet when they’re available.

Jim McLaughlin, former Maryknoll Lay Missioner in Cambodia and a frequent visitor here as he continues his microbiology work in the kingdom, spotted this suspicious vehicle on Phnom Penh streets.  What kind of nefarious V Ice is going on in the back of this truck?  It must be hot stuff since it’s a refrigerated truck but there could be many different kinds of mobile v ice.

 

North Americans on the road tend to dash in for hamburgers or ice cream or large sugary drinks.  In Cambodia the traveling clientele opt for different kinds of fruit or bags of snacks like dried bananas  or other crunchy things.

There are many signs that Cambodia is moving into the 21st century—paving sidewalks, jamming the streets with cars, erecting tall buildings–but there are also indicators that Cambodia still hasn’t made the jump from a simple village life style to a modern city environment.

When I first came, I don’t remember one shop on the main street that had an enclosed front.  Each store had a pull-down metal shutter that, when opened, revealed the whole interior of the ground floor.  Then slowly one shop after another started to have a glass front, a normal doorway, and it was no longer possible to drive motorcycle or car into the store at night.

As the shops were enclosed, they needed air conditioning and it’s spreading, but it’s still at its earliest stages.  New modern buildings often have individual stand-alone AC units sticking out like warts all over the exterior.  This KFC at least has put all the units in one place, but central air conditioning’s time has not yet arrived.

 

“I never saw much reason for rearview mirrors but they can come in handy!”